Tales of a Spartan III in Mass Effect
by Concussion30
Summary: A lone Spartan III finds himself on Horizon in the middle of a Collector attack. He finds and joins Commander Lillian Shepard and joins the fight against the Collectors and later the Reapers. He finds friends and more along his journey (FShep and Liara) (OC and Kasumi)
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER 1**

 **MISSION UPDATE**

 **SIII** **PETTY OFFICER THIRD CLASS** **COLIN "IRISH" B027**

 **DATE: UNKNOWN**

 **LOCATION:UNKNOWN**

 **LAST KNOWN LOCATION: SOEIV BAY OF UNSC POINT OF NO RETURN GEOSYNC ORBIT OVER NEW MOMBASA**

 **END UPDATE**

Stars exploded across my vision as my SOEIV impacted the surface of the planet, dirt and debris flying everywhere as it dug several feet into the ground. I shook my head as I tried to clear it and grabbed my M7 Caseless SMG and activated my hatch, it exploded outwards landing 10 feet away. I launch myself out of the pod, weapon up and scanning for hostiles. Seeing none I turn around and collect my other weapon from my pod, the SRS99D-S2 Anti-Matériel, more commonly known as The Sniper Rifle. I checked it for damage, satisfied it was in working order I slung my SMG on my back and shouldered it. I grabbed and counted in all the mags I had for it 20 extended mags each holding 6 rounds, 120 rounds of pure destruction I could reach out and touch someone with. I next inspected my armor for any damage from the drop, again satisfied I take of my helmet and take a look at it, the worn dark green metal and faded gold visor of my SPI suit wasn't dented or damaged, happy I slipped it back on and ran a systems check on my SPI suit. My photoreactive panels finally sputtered and I melted into my surroundings

I moved towards some prefab buildings I had seen right before landing. The town was eerily silent with almost no sounds to be heard other than a quiet buzzing. I kept my guard up not trusting the buzzing noise to be more than simple background noise. As I swept through the streets I noticed what had to be pods floating on the dirt roads. _Strange must be some form of transport._ I thought to myself as I kept moving, still finding no sign of life.

Gunfire sounded in the distance, couldn't have been farther than a couple hundred yards. I sprinted the distance eager to find some sort of life. I found a boxed courtyard but the door leading in was locked. I looked around and found a crate I could climb on to get onto the courtyard wall. Finally clambering up the wall I saw a squad of 3 humans and one tall and skinny alien in blue armor. They were fighting some sort of bug looking creatures that shot beams out of insectoid looking guns. I quickly decided to support the humans and lined up a shot with one of the creatures heads. Pause a heartbeat, CRACK, the creature dropped missing half its head. The human squad ducked thinking the shot was coming for them, but quickly recovered when I put a second shot into another bug's head making it backflip headless.

My comm gear in my helmet lit up with a faint signal. "Anyone see where those shots came from?" A female voice asked.

"No, but whomever it was they're good, two perfect headshots" replied a deeper voice that had a weird vibration to it.

I kept quiet but sent my location with an arrow over my head through the channel.

"Guess that answers that" the female said again. "If you are friendly, mind supporting us while we try to get these defense towers online?"

I sent a green light through the channel and went back to focusing on targets. CRACK CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, another four bugs go down missing some if not all of their heads. I drop my mag and swap another looking for targets but finding none.

"Thanks for the assist." The female said, "We should be clear want to come down?"

Sweeping the area one more time I saw a giant flying thing coming towards the courtyard. I flashed a red light and highlighted the thing.

"Heads up!" The female, who I was figuring out to be the leader, yelled. And the others got to cover and opened fire on the thing. CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, I fired six shots as fast as I could into one of thing's eyes and watched it drop to the ground. However instead of dying the thing created a huge shockwave that sent the squads box cover tumbling and them scattering to find new cover. I swore and dropped the mag from my sniper and swapped for another, this one labeled HEAP or High Explosive Armor Piercing. I racked the slide and took aim on the mouth of the thing, waited for it to open its mouth and fired 3 times and watched as the thing's eyes dimmed and it started disintegrating.

"Shepard the Guardian Batteries are up, beginning fire." A robotic female voice stated as the giant turrets started firing at a giant insectoid ship in the distance. The ship started to rise and take off towards the sky and soon was out of sight.

"Good work team let's go get to the shuttle, hey Mr. Sniper care to join us?" "Shepard" said.

I flashed a green light and jumped down of the wall, landing softly on the ground and walked over to the group of soldiers deactivating my SPI's camo system as I did so. The leader of the group was wearing dark grey body armor with a red stripe and a N7 on the left part of her chest. She also had Commander bars on painted on the collar of her armor.

Years of instinct commanded my next move. I snapped to attention and gave a crisp salute. "Commander Ma'am!"

Surprised she quickly composed herself and returned the salute. "At ease." She said as I lowered my salute and relaxed. She extended her hand in a handshake which I returned.

"Commander Lillian Shepard, Alliance Navy, Spectre. Thanks for the assist Mr.?"

"Petty Officer Third Class Spartan B027 Fireteam Delta, UNSC."

"I'm sorry, I've never heard of the UNSC but I appreciate the assist, what are you doing here?"

 _They've never heard of the UNSC? where the hell am I?_

"Ma'am where exactly am I?"

"The planet Horizon, Iera System, but how do you not know that?"

 _I've never heard of Horizon. But I guess it coud be a private colony away from UNSC space._

"I need to get back to Earth, Do you have a craft capable of getting me back there?"

"Yes, but that doesnt answer my question. How do you not know what planet you are on Petty Officer."

"My pod hit the ground pretty hard, I might have just forgotten what planet I was dropped on."

"Well then lets get you checked out by our doctor back on our ship. Now answer my question, Why are you on Horizon?"

 _Need to come up with something, I may be in possible enemy territory._

"My pod, was a life pod my ship got destroyed in orbit a while ago and crashed here on planet. I barely made it to the pod before my ship was destroyed."

"Alright, you don't appear hostile so I'll bring you aboard for now, but I will have someone monitoring you."

"Aye."

"Miranda!" Shepard called.

"Yes, Shepard." The other female in the squad answered. Her "armor" was much different. It was what looked like a catsuit made out of leather.

"Keep this quiet for now I will have EDI monitoring communications between you and TIM."

"Yes Commander." The brunette beauty replied.

Shepard raised a hand to her ear, "Joker send the shuttle I have a plus one we need to debrief."

"Aye Commander, eta three minutes."

The shuttle soon arrived and I hopped on without a second thought knowing anywhere was probably safer than here. As the shuttle took off, I settled back and went through my mission video footage to see if it caught how I managed to get sucked into another dimension.

 **START VID PLAYBACK**

The screen shakes as the pod is dropped from the UNSC Point of No Return, it soon cleared the clouds and the Covenant carrier came into view as it started to enter slip space. My pod was going directly at the portal, suddenly EMP slammed into my pod and sent it straight into the portal. Blue and black swirled around the camera then the grass and buildings of the planet I landed on came into view and then the pod slammed into the ground.

 **END VID PLAYBACK**

I shook my head I was really stuck here then, I doubt they had slipspace tech in this universe.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

MISSION UPDATE

SIII COLIN "IRISH" B027

DATE: UNKNOWN

LOCATION: UNKNOWN VESSEL IN ORBIT ABOVE UNKNOWN PLANET

END UPDATE

The shuttle settled to the deck of the small corvette. The shuttle door opened and everyone stepped out.

"Grab some food, shower, whatever you need to do and meet in the meeting room in 30 minutes. Petty Officer, follow me I'll show you to the crew deck and mess hall." Shepard stated then walk led towards an elevator.

I simply nodded and followed Shepard and stood in the back corner of the elevator.

"So Petty Officer any thoughts as to what you might do now that you are here?"

I thought for a moment then had an idea, Shepard seemed nice enough and if those creatures attacked anywhere else he could help her. "With your permission Commander I'd like to join your crew. And after you finish whatever you are doing fighting those bugs I'd like to find a way to get home."

Shepard seemed to think for a couple seconds, " alright Petty Officer permission granted welcome to the team. This beautiful ship is The Normandy SR2. This is a heavy frigate with stealth capabilities, and she can take a beating and dish it out as well. State of the art Cyclonic barriers and Ablative Paneling make sure we can take hits while our Thanix Cannon makes use we can kill in a single shot."

"This is a heavy frigate? This is barely a corvette where I'm from."

The elevator stopped and opened.

"Do they make everything bigger and better where you're from?"

"Not really mainline troops don't have shields like you do we just have body armor."

Shepard looked at me wide-eyed, "You don't have shields?"

"No we don't have small enough power packs to power personal shields."

"We'll have to fix that, would you be willing to go to our doctor get a checkup then drop your gear off in our armory? Our Armorer can integrate a shield into your gear."

I paused for a moment thinking, "Yes ma'am I can do that just please don't send any reports of my gear to that Tim you mentioned."

"I can do that now report to Doctor Chakwas."

"Yes ma'am"

As I walked towards the infirmary Shepard added, "On this ship I just go by Shepard."

"Ok ma... I mean Shepard, you can call me Irish."

She just chuckled and walked back towards the elevator finally taking the time to remove her black visored helmet. She had long flowing blonde hair and a pretty face that was soft and sharp at the same time.

I stepped into the infirmary and greeted the doctor, she ordered me to strip and put on a robe. I did so quickly years of practice helping me. I put on the robe after I stacked my helmet on the top of the pile.

"Nice armor set. Custom made?" The doctor said looking at the armor for a second.

"No ma'am just standard issue."

She just responded with a hum and scanned me with her tool device and took a blood and tissue sample before giving me a set of fatigues that had a yellow/orange diamond thing on the chest. I put them on and collected my gear to bring to the armory. I walked to the elevator and a blue orb appeared.

"Greetings Mr B027, I am EDI the ship's VI would you like to go to the armory?"

"Hello EDI yes I would like to go to the armory please."

The orb winked off and the elevator started upward. It stopped on what looked like the bridge/command floor I hesitated before EDI winked back into existence.

"Take at left it's the only door there. The meeting room is also behind next to the armory."

"Thanks EDI."

"Logging you out."

I walked into the armory and greeted the other soldier I saw on the ground in the planet.

"Jacob Taylor nice to meet you Mr. B027, Shepard told us you would be joining us."

He extended his hand which I shook.

"Looking forward to fighting those things. Shepard said you could get a shield installed in my armor?"

"Yes I can it might take a couple hours to a day depending on if I need to create a custom interface for your HUD."

"Alright I hope I won't need it for a little bit then." I turned and walked into the meeting room, Taylor right behind me. I stood around the table and looked around the room and saw a large alien that remind me of a brute but in lizard form, a smaller alien that looked like it should have two horns but was missing one, and a human female with buzzed hair and… nothing else but a tiny leather bra thing on… I quickly looked away towards Shepard and Miranda.

"Good everyone is here" Shepard started, "The mission went well, we didn't save all the colonists but we did better than expected for our first time against the collectors. We have a few more people to pick up and one of them is in deep in geth territory. We are going after her first out of the three we have left. Any questions? Alright then dismissed. We will arrive by tomorrow evening and won't go planetside until the morning."

I waited around until everyone left the meeting room, leaving just me and Shepard.

"You need something Irish?"

"Yes Shepard, I need a place to bunk."

Shepard thought for a second. "EDI can you ask Kasumi if she would mind sharing the lounge? We are running out of places to stay."

"No Shep I won't mind at all." A disembodied female voice stated from my right. Startled I tackled the voice and felt a feminine body under mine as I found and removed a pistol from her leg. I snapped out of it a moment later remembering that it wasn't an Elite I tackled. I slowly stood up and offered my hand to the hooded woman who had deactivated her cloak. She took it smiling slightly. Looking down I saw that some sort of small metal device was attached to my hip.

"Shock mine, if you were going to do any serious harm I'd have activated it sending you to the floor faster than a shock baton would." Answering my implied question.

I reached down and grabbed it.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. Any tampering will trigger it let me deactivate it for you."

I just nodded and let go of the device which soon fell of and was grabbed by the hooded woman before it hit the ground.

"Sorry about that."

The woman smiled "It's ok, maybe I enjoyed it just a little." She said with a giggle before vanishing again. I felt a poke in the ribs and another giggle before the door opened and closed.

I looked to Shepard who just beckoned me with her arm and walked out the same door the Kasumi woman walked out of. We took a staircase that winds around the elevator shaft and ended back on the crew deck. We took a right and walked into a room labeled port observation. Inside a bed and a couch sat next to each other with a space between the two. A bar was opposite the couch.

"Hope you don't mind sleeping on a couch we don't have another bed right now, we could get a bed next time we are at the Citadel."

"That's ok Shepard, a couch is fine for me."

"Alright Irish, get some rest I want you on the ground team for Haestrom."

"Yes Shepard, what am I gonna do for ammunition? I have enough for a couple missions but after that I'd rather not have to learn new weapon systems at this time."

"If you could provide a round of each type to Jacob he could find a way to manufacture them."

"Alright I'll do that before I get some rest."

I nodded to Shepard and went up the stairs to the armory. I speak briefly to Jacob and give him a round from my M7, my Sniper Rifle, and my M6H2 Pistol. I told him that Shepard had said he might be able to make ammunition for me. He said he'd see what he could do and went back downstairs and tried to sleep for a few hours.


	3. Reviews

Thanks for the reviews everyone and I got a chance to read them . I know a lot of my dialogue is lacking which is unfortunate. I will rework the old chapters here and fix my current one as I have time to work on them. However between reworking the chapters and the one I'm working on it may be a bit before the next chapter is released


	4. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

MISSION UPDATE

SIII COLIN "IRISH" B027

DATE:UNKNOWN EST. 2 DAYS AFTER PICKUP ON PLANET DESIGNATED HORIZON

LOCATION: NORMANDY SR2 ABOVE PLANET HAESTROM, DEEP GETH TERRITORY

I walked into the meeting room ready for the morning briefing, after showering and grabbing breakfast. I was one of the last people to walk in. I smiled at that, guess no matter where you are some things never change. Shepard looked around making sure everyone was accounted for and activated the central projector, a planet appearing.

"This is Haestrom, a former Quarian colony now deserted after the Geth Uprising, our target, Tali'Zorah Vas Neema is here on a mission for the Migrant Fleet. Our job is to find and secure Tali and help speed up her mission so we can add her to our crew. Ground crew will be; Irish, Kasumi, Jack. A warning for the ground team direct sunlight will drain your shields so stick to the shade as much as possible. Any questions?"

I raised my hand,unsure of protocol. I decide to not ask about quarians since I sure as hell didn't want it known I had no clue what a quarian was.

"Yes Irish."

"Weapon loadouts ma'am?"

"Whatever you need to get the job done. Any other questions? No, good meet at the hangar in 20 minutes. Dismissed."

I walked out to the armory and grabbed my under armor proceeded to get dressed. In 5 minutes I was placing my helmet on my head and grabbing my weapons and all ammo but the rounds I had given Jacob. I went to the mess hall next and grabbed four ration bars and put them in a pocket in my pack. I then took the stairs down to the hangar and did a quick gear check with my weapons and did a diagnostic on my armor. The diagnostic came back 100% and a blue bar appeared in the top of my HUD. Guess that is my shield indicator. As I finished my gear check the rest of the ground team arrived and began to board the shuttle.

Aboard the shuttle, I sat on one of the seats that were along the wall. I closed my eyes and decided to rest for the half an hour descent to the planet.

Shepard

Shepard sat on one of the crash seats reviewing her team comp and mission enemy expectancies. Her comm unit cracked to life

"Shepard I need to go over Irish's medical report with you." Chakwas' voice came through.

"What about it?"

"There are multiple anomalies in his blood and tissue samples that suggest extensive bio augmentation more advanced than those given to our mainline Marines.

"Ok what's the problem here?"

"The augmentations have altered his skeletal structure and nerves. His reactions are faster than any of our marines and can sustain blows to his body that will kill any normal human."

"I'll ask about it later, right now I'm going to focus on the mission."

"Yes Commander" Chakawas' voice faded from the comm system.

Shepard glanced over at Irish, whose head was leant back against the Hammerhead's rear wall resting.

Shepard activated her helmet's external speakers, "Ready up, we land in 10."

Kasumi and Jack both responded with a nod while Irish sent his standard green light and stood by the door his massive sniper rifle at the ready. The door popped open and Irish aimed down the scope, "there's a gate ahead no enemies spotted."

"Alright people quick and clean let's get our VIP."

Irish

I slung my sniper over my shoulder and pulled my M7S seeing that we were about to enter the gate's guard house. I stepped to the right of the door and nodded at Shepard who pressed the holographic interface and entered first, sweeping left from the door. I entered M7 up and scanning as I swept the right side of the room. I sent a green light to Shepard, the clear signal.

Shepard stood before a holographic control panel pressed a couple buttons and opened the gate, I dove at her out of instinct and shoved her it of the way of a volley of shots that would have riddled her with bullets. Seven clipped my shields and one made it through a weak point in my armor and ripped into my shoulder, the pain in the farthest reaches of my mind I pulled my sniper, scoped, aimed, and fired. CRACK, the weird robot dropped missing half its flashlight head. I shifted aim, found another flashlight head CRACK, I looked down and saw Shepard finally getting up. I looked at my mission clock in the bottom right corner of my HUD, time between Shepard opening the door to the forced deactivation of those two robots, 1.5 seconds. I chuckled to myself in my helmet, Spartan Time was amazing during combat. I lowered my sniper satisfied the threat was eliminated and looked to Shepard who stared at me. At least I thought she was staring at me as her black mirrored faceplate kept me from seeing her expression. Nodding at her I ran a systems check of my SPI suit and found it still at full operational capacity and activated my photoreactive panels and melted into the shadows scouting ahead for Shepard. I avoided sunlight as Shepard had briefed, it had drained my shields and made an array of EM radiation play across my SPIs photoreactive panels during the brief exposure I'd had with it. I skirted the edge of a pit with a building at the far end being hammered by Geth fire.

I activated my comm, "Shepard I've found a building occupied by non Geth. They are holding their own but I don't know how much longer they can hold with that kind of fire against them permission to engage?"

"Affirmative but be selective of your shots, you don't want to accidentally hit a friendly."

I flashed a green light and settled behind a nice shaded pillar and sighted in on my first target, the biggest geth around. I lined up with his head, CRACK, the round went straight through its neck sending whit fluid everywhere and causing the rest of the Geth to shift fire towards me but not really landing anywhere close as their sensors weren't able to find me at this distance. I found another Geth that was trying to flank the bunker and squeezed off another round. The Geth seemed to feel my reticle on it and ducked only to get the round through the top of it's head instead of through it's neck. I smiled grimly as I looked for another target only to see the rest had been disabled by Shepard and the rest of the team. I swept the field again and saw a single geth struggling to rise, holes in both knees and parts seemingly disintegrated from some impact. I crept up to it and pulled my combat knife from its sheath in on my shoulder and stabbed it in it's head.

"Clear"

"Alright let's sweep for survivors." Came Shepard's reply.

I moved towards the bunker door and stacked up along its side readying my M7. Shepard got to cover on the other side of locked eyes and Shepard nodded. I slammed the green panel on the door and entered in front of Shepard. A pistol round bounced off my shield as I rolled and took cover behind a piece of furniture. A cloaked figure was firing at me as Shepard came in and riddled it with rounds of her own. The geth dropped and sputtered, I stood up and reactivated my SPI panels fading from view.

"Probably should have entered the room like that eh Irish?" Shepard's mocking tone came through my helmet speakers.

I simply sent a green light.

I saw her shake her head then she snapped back into serious mode. Coming up to a Quarian who was battling the geth in a section below us, I deactivated my SPI panels.

"Friendlies coming in!"

I slammed against the small wall he was using as cover and used a small mirror to look over the wall. A large group of geth were gathering around a large four legged geth.

The Quarian was updating Shepard on the situation so I popped up with my sniper and squeezed a round off towards the large geth's head. Instead of blowing apart the round bounced off and hit a sniper behind the armature.

"Sniper isn't doing anything."

Shepard nodded and summoned a what I could only describe as a visible black hole on the large geth and Jack followed it up with a bright purple orb that exploded when it hit the black hole. The geth crumpled and fell.

"Colossus down let's mop up the rest of them."

Nodding I went to work with my pistol as I needed to conserve sniper rounds as I had already used 4 clips on this mission. I only have 14 left and I have no clue how long I'm gonna have to make those last.

I five rounds into a geth platform trying to flank Shepard and Kasumi and found a cloaked platform trying to creep up on Jack. I fired and dropped its shields and then Jack spun glowing purple and somehow blew the geth unit into a bunch of tiny bits. Swapping to my smg I sprint forward to cover. I spray a 5 round burst at a large geth unit that drained its shields. I put another 3 rounds through its head that put it down and swept for more hostiles but found none.

My comms system opened up a secure channel and I heard Shepard's voice, "Make a final sweep then meet up at the door to that building."

I replied with a green light then swept the area finding a single geth unit struggling to crawl out of a patch of sun. I crept up on it and placed my foot on its back then grabbed both sides of its head and wrenched the head from the rest of its body. The body stopped struggling and went limp and i threw the head to the ground.

"Clear." I said over comms.

"Same here Shep." Kasumi said over the radio.

"Alright regroup on the door"

"Aye" I cloak and move to the door, avoiding what sun I could before sprinting the last 20 meters and decloaking next to Shepard.

"Remember, there is at least one friendly in here so check your targets. Kasumi and Irish you two go first cloaked just to make sure there aren't any surprises."

"Yes Shep."

"Yes ma'am"

"Ok door in" Shepard held out three fingers, then two, then one. As her last finger dropped the door opened, and I entered right and Kasumi left. A lone quarian woman stood working on a console. She spun right hand glowing orange and something hit me in the chest. My SPI panels sputtered and shut off overloaded from electricity.

"Hey watch it friendly!" I yelled as I dove for cover.

Shepard entered afterward and saw the quarian.

"Tali glad to see you're alright."

"Shepard what are you doing here?" 'Tali' said, a light on her helmet flashing with her words.

I tuned out their conversation as I scanned the room. There was a surprising amount of geth corpses in here, this Tali person must have some skill as a fighter. I heard the door open and I spun SMG up, the Quarian that we had assisted was standing in the doorway holding his stomach. I lowered my SMG and went back to scanning the room, odd some of these geth had scorch marks on their bodies, almost like they got hit with pure electricity.

"Irish you coming?" Shepard"s voice broke through my observations.

"Yeah." was all I replied as I followed her out of the room and to the waiting shuttle.


	5. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

MISSION UPDATE

SIII COLIN "IRISH" G027

DATE: UNKNOWN EST. 1 DAY AFTER HAESTROM MISSION

MISSION STATUS: COMPLETED

LOCATION: NORMANDY SR2 PORT LOUNGE, ENROUTE TO CITADEL

DREAM

JUNE 14, 2544

JUST OUTSIDE CAMP CURRAHEE

HEADHUNTER TEAM HUNTER-KILLER

"This is going to be good, eh Irish?" Jamie B167 said excitement evident in her voice as we crept up on our training target. Part of our selection for the Headhunter Program was to ambush and eliminate SCPO Mendez. While the other members of Beta company had this week off to recover after a grueling 72 hour training exercise, us Headhunter pairing hopefuls had to all ambush and "kill" SCPO Mendez over the course of the week. Which meant we not only had to coordinate with our partners but the four other pairs of Spartans currently deep in the jungles of Onyx.

Jamie B167 was my partner as we had been paired for compatibility by Deep Winter when we were first selected to partake in the Headhunter Program. So far three other pairs had been eliminated leaving just five pairs for this exercise, the second to last exercise.

I simply sent back a green light over our com link. Mendez undoubtedly had Deep Winter or some DI listening in to our comms, seeing as our last three assassination attempts had been thoroughly stopped.

Right now we were sitting in a large tree right on the edge of the jungle our SPI armor camouflaging us to any type of sensor system in use at the camp. I had my standard loadout of SR, SMG, and Pistol, Jamie has a BR55 and a Pistol, she prefered to carry a lighter loadout so she could move quicker. Sometimes I had to wonder why Winter paired us together, Janey was quick to move and was impatient when it came to not having action, whereas I was slow and methodical and could wait days to take a single shot, which is what we had been doing since our last failure. We have 3 hours left to kill SCPO Mendez and we were the last pair to need to take him out. We were going to be assisted by Team Fury, whom we assisted with a distraction yesterday, and they were able to sneak up and eliminate SCPO Mendez.

I pulled out our datapad that we had isolated from the local networks so we could communicate without Deep Winter or any of the DIs being able to intercept it and typed.

2 minutes to distraction, I'll take the shot on Mendez then you can spray any DIs there are around him, sound good?

I handed her the pad and she nodded and put the pad in her pack. Right on que SCPO Mendez walked out from his quarters surrounded by DIs as they went for their daily jog. All of them had pistols on their hips and a few had SMGS as well. I put my sights on Mendez and waited. Just as they cleared a series of barracks, fire erupted from their sides, several of the SMG carrying DIs dropping from the stun rounds, I waited a second while Mendez fired back at the now hidden Team Fury, then pulled the trigger twice at his chest. CRACK CRACK rounds traveled and found their mark one hitting his chest the other hitting his stomach. I made sure my scope's recorder was working and then uploaded and submitted the footage to Deep Winter.

"Well done Headhunter teams Fireteam Hunter-Killer that was the last team needed to submit their footage, you are cleared to return to base for 3 days R&R then you are to report to LT. Ambrose for reassignment." Came Deep Winter's voice over our comms systems.

"You hear that Colin? We get to relax a bit, want to hang out like we did last time we had R&R?" Jamie said eyes looking at me hopefully as her visor depolarized. Jamie was of Asian descent, she had jet black hair and her eyes were brown with a hint of yellow

"Yeah that sounds good." I responded smiling as my visor depolarized. I didn't miss the fact that she used my real name versus my nickname. It was gossiped in the barracks that the two of us had a different bond over being just friends, and well to be honest they were right. Me and Jamie were closer than friends, with us being two of the older Spartans in the company we had already had discovered feelings, like love and lust before the Spartan Program, but we also knew that we couldn't openly show our feelings for each other around the base, so whenever we had R&R we took a short walk to a pond inside a clearing in the jungle, it had a stream flowing in and out of it keeping the water fresh, and we just enjoyed each other's company.

Suddenly everything starts going back and Jamie's voice gets far away. The blackness fades and I'm kneeling in a cluster of trees, Jamie's corpse is my arms. I feel something roll down my cheek as I look at her corpse. Half of her armor was melted away, revealing blackened skin and carbonized bone in places, blood was pooled around her and beyond that the corpses of 15 Elites and 20 Jackals. She went down fighting, at least I could find solace in that. We knew the risks of being in a relationship and being Spartans, but never did we think we'd live without one another. I looked down at my own armor, it was holed and melted to me in places and I was bleeding from where I got stabbed by a plasma dagger but I'd live, physically at least, but my hands were covered in blood, her blood. Part of me felt like I was dying as well as I primed a thermite grenade and set it on her armor. ONI was clear no equipment was allowed to fall into enemy hands, and I still had a mission to accomplish on this damn planet. I got up and stepped back as the thermite triggered and burned bright, taking Jamie's body with it. I grabbed my sniper rifle and reactivated my SPI panels, I would finish this mission for her.

As I started moving towards the Covie base my vision started blurring and suddenly I was lying in the couch in the starboard lounge. I felt something wet on my cheek, I wiped my face and realized it was tears. I haven't had that dream in years, what brought that out?

"Bad dream?" Kasumi's voice came from her bed.

Yes Im gonna end this chapter here, I feel like this is a good way to end this chapter and it will set me up for next chapter. Hope you guys enjoyed and will continue along this journey with me. Until next time-C


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